June 13th.—­Singapore.—­We arrived at about noon.  I find a new governor, Colonel Cavanagh....  I am to take up my abode at the Government House.  Not much news from China, but a letter from Hope Grant, asking me to order to China a Sikh regiment, which has been stopped here by Canning’s orders, and I think I shall take the responsibility of reversing C.’s order, with which the men were very much disgusted.

The next day he was afloat again, on his way to Hong-Kong.

June 14th.—­When you receive this, you will be thinking of dear Bruce’s school plans.  Would that I could share your thoughts and anxieties!...  I have been reading a rather curious book—­the ’Life of Perthes,’ a Hamburg bookseller.  It reveals something of the working of the inner life of Germany during the time of the first Napoleonic Empire.  It might interest you.

[Sidenote:  Books.]

June 17th.—­Another Sunday.  How many since we parted?  I cannot count them.  It seems to me as if a good many years had elapsed since that sad evening at Dover.  But here I am going on farther and farther from home!  We hope to reach Hong-Kong on Thursday next; but that is not the end of my voyage, though it is the beginning of my work.  I am still comparatively idle, ransacking the captain’s cabin for books.  The last I have read is Kingsley’s ‘Two Years Ago.’  I do not wonder that you ladies like Kingsley, for he makes all his women guardian angels.

June 19th.—­I have read Trench’s ‘Lectures on English’ since yesterday.  I think you know them, but I had not done more than glance at them before.  They open up a curious field of research if one had time enough to enter upon it.  The monotony of our life is not broken by many incidents.  Tennyson’s poem of the ‘Lotus-Eaters’ suits us well, as we move noiselessly through this polished sea, on which the great eye of the sun is glaring down from above.  We passed a ship yesterday with all sails set.  This was an event; to-day a butterfly made its appearance.  In two days I may be forming decisions on which the well-being of thousands of our fellow-creatures may be contingent.

June 20th.—­Still it is sad, sometimes almost overwhelming, to think of the many causes of anxiety from which you may be suffering, of which for months I can have no knowledge, and with which these letters when you receive them may seem to have no sympathy....  I can only pray that you may have in your troubles a protection and a guidance more effectual than any which I could afford when I was with you....  As to my own particular interests, I mean those connected with my mission, I can hardly form any conjectures....  I am glad that the time for work is arriving, though I cannot but feel a little nervous anxiety until I know what I shall learn at Hong-Kong respecting our prospects with the Chinese, &c. &c.